Chapter 20 #2
“I’m always honest. And now get into bed with me.”
God knows why that makes me shiver, but I hide it under a sigh. “Don’t you generally say the opposite of what you actually mean?”
“You know all about that, don’t you?” she says as I slide in next to her.
I grab the quilt. “Maybe we’re not as different as you’d like to think, Henderson.”
“You and I have nothing in common, Fantino,” she declares. “Nothing at all.”
I smile wearily. “If you say so . . .”
“You don’t know me,” she murmurs. That old classic. Her back is lying against my shoulder. I can feel the warmth of her body. And I want to put my arm around her, pull her to me, and hold her tight. I’m so screwed.
“I know, Olive Garden,” I say quietly. I know . . .
She doesn’t reply, and I wish I could see her face as she shuts her eyes.
But I can’t. I just lie beside her and listen to her regular breathing.
It gets very deep very quickly. Just as quickly as the urge grows within me to stroke the dark strands of her hair that are slanted over her face. But I don’t dare.
I’m lying next to her in her bed, wondering what I’m doing there.
How we can yell at each other, hurl insults at each other, and then, a few hours later, wind up side by side in yet another darkened room.
It’s like Fate gets a real kick out of forcing us together, just to see what’ll happen.
If only I knew that: the next step. When Olive Garden is near, I have no idea what I’ll do next.
Mainly because she makes me do the exact opposite of what I really want.
Not a very cheerful fact. Because now I’m here.
In her room. She’s fallen asleep beside me, and it’s doing something to me.
Doing a whole number on me, to be honest, because in the sudden silence, I can feel everything more intensely.
Every heartbeat thumping in my ears, every dry gulp, which seems way too loud.
Don’t move. Don’t make any weird noises.
Don’t touch her. But fuck, this bed is narrow.
It would definitely be more comfortable if I turned toward her and put my arm . . .
No. Enough is enough.
I don’t care if I wake her, I need distance.
I roll onto my other side and pull my phone out of my pants pocket.
I dim the screen as much as I can before scrolling through Instagram, not really taking anything in.
My eyes are burning—maybe I’m a bit more tired than I thought, or maybe it’s just Olive Garden’s even, peaceful breathing gradually rubbing off on me.
I must have dropped off, because when I wake up, I’ve lost all sense of time.
I suppress a groan as I remember where I am.
My shoulder is numb, and I wish I could roll over.
I’ve been here quite long enough, and upstairs there’s a bed where I can sleep in comfort without having to squeeze myself onto a foot-wide strip of mattress.
But I don’t feel I can leave now. Especially not when I suddenly hear something.
Beside me, Olive Garden is whimpering quietly, which is probably what woke me.
At first, I think it’s just one of those noises people make in their sleep, but I freeze as I realize she’s shaking.
She’s dreaming. I turn slightly more onto my side, and my phone, which must have been on the mattress beside me, crashes to the floor.
I pray to God it’ll wake her, but although she jumps, her eyes stay shut.
Her breath is heavy and irregular now.
“Hey . . .” I hesitate, then touch her shoulder. “Olive.”
My blood runs cold as she makes that whimpering noise again.
It makes something switch off in my brain, and I start to panic.
Because I know how fucking real these dreams can feel.
I grab her tighter and shake her slightly.
“Livy . . .” Fuck, since when do I call her that?
I guess I’ve heard her friends say it, and this is some pathetic attempt at soothing her. “You have to wake up, come on.”
When she startles out of her sleep, there’s a moment when I’m not sure if she’s even breathing. Yes, she is, but the realization doesn’t calm me. Because I can see that she’s crying. And that’s when I give in.
The second I fling my arms around her and hold her tight, her stiffness melts. A hoarse sob sounds from her throat, and then she gasps for air, like she’s spent ages underwater. The sound melts something deep within me, so I hug her tighter.
“Hey, it was a dream. It was only a silly dream, OK?” My voice sounds rough, and I’m not sure if she hears me.
But suddenly her hand is on my arm—and, fuck me, she’s gripping hard.
On to me. My heart beats faster. “It wasn’t real, everything’s OK.
It’s all good, OK?” I can’t stop saying that even though I doubt it helps.
And she can’t stop crying. It’s driving me crazy, but I force myself to sound calm because that’s probably the only way I can actually help her now.
“Want me to put the light on?” I ask after a while, ready to let go of her, but she holds on to my hand.
“No.”
My heart skips. “Fine.” I shut my eyes and try to pull myself together. “Want to . . . tell me about it?”
She doesn’t answer right away. Strictly speaking, she doesn’t answer at all. Maybe I’m just imagining the slight shake of her head, but her breath is gradually calming.
“OK,” I say. If she’s still crying, she’s doing so silently now, but there’s no way I’m letting go.
Not while her fingers keep gripping my wrist, so icy cold.
I rest my brow against her shoulder and don’t speak as I slowly stroke my thumb over her arm.
It’s dark; I’m really too chicken for these invisible touches, but even through the cloth of my hoodie, I think I can feel her racing heart. Or maybe it’s mine.
Her small body grows calmer and fits perfectly with mine. She snuggles into me like we were made for each other, and she’s close. I’m close. I can feel everything and hear everything. Her swallowing, for example.
“Is this—” I clear my throat and loosen my hug slightly. “. . . Is this OK?”
She just digs her fingers harder into my skin and nods silently. Maybe everything just now was so terrible she can’t even speak. I recognize that feeling only too well, so I hold her closer again.
“Sorry,” she whispers after a while.
“Don’t be,” I say, and it sounds harsher than I intended, so I nuzzle her shoulder gently, then move away. “Nightmares are shit.”
“They really are,” she manages, her voice still like sandpaper.
She said she didn’t want to talk about it, but the whole time I’m thinking about what she said when we first met.
An accident . . . And even though I still don’t know exactly what happened, I’m sure that must be what’s tormenting her.
I could blame it on the alcohol still in my body, but maybe it’s my own deliberate decision when I press my lips into her shoulder.
It’s the shoulder that makes her wince when she lifts her arm too fast or bumps into doorframes.
Her vulnerable spot, and when I gently caress it with my lips, she makes a muffled sound.
“Colin.” She has no idea what effect it has on me when she says my first name. I hear the pain in her voice.
“What happened to you?” I ask quietly, and instantly regret it. She tenses.
“Please, I . . . Can we just not talk about it?”
“OK.” I pull away from her slightly. “But only if you promise me that you have someone else to talk about it with.”
“I don’t need to talk to anyone.”
“Yes, you do.” I hesitate as I remember what the head said when I arrived here.
“They have this school shrink here . . . Stop that,” I add as she snorts derisively.
“Go see her or I’ll tell your dad that you’re doing shit.
” When she tries to pull away from my arms, I hold her tight. “I fucking mean it.”
“What’s your problem?”
You’re my problem. And I wish I could solve it.
Of course I don’t say that. I let go of her and glare back as she turns to me. Her curtains are open, and the moonlight makes the tears glitter on her cheeks. I lift my hand to wipe them away, but she doesn’t let me.
“Tell me that wasn’t a lie.”
“What wasn’t?”
“How long ago did you split up?”
Maresa . . . Got you. God knows why she’s starting on that now.
I don’t want to have this conversation, but there’s no getting away from it, so we might as well go through with it now. She seems like she’s sobered up enough to remember it in the morning.
“We were never together,” I say, and she can’t miss the bitterness in my voice.
Olive raises her eyebrows in surprise. “In those pictures, you’re looking at her like she’s the only person in the world.”
I clench my jaw. “We were never a couple,” I growl again. She seems to understand. There’s sympathy in her eyes now, and that makes everything worse. “Not that I know what business it is of yours.”
Unfortunately, we seem to have got to a point where she doesn’t scare so easily. She watches me attentively.
“It wasn’t a lie,” I say. But it’s dark, she’s lying in her bed in front of me, and just now, during that nightmare, Olive Garden was so vulnerable that I feel the need to give her some vulnerability in return, to keep things fair.
I’m afraid otherwise, the universe could tip off kilter.
With us, you never know. “I thought it was something more too. Ha. My mistake.”
“Are you in love with her?”
A question like that is mean enough when you’re not lying an inch from someone and forced to look into their face. But the answer is clear.
No.
I don’t know what love feels like. I only know the desire to be seen by someone, and that has nothing to do with being in love. So there’s nothing to think about, but I hesitate all the same.
“She hurt me, so it hurts, but I . . . I’m not in love with her,” I say in the end. “I never was. I think there’s more to being in love. And that’s no lie.”
Olive nods. “My mum had an affair.” I freeze, but I’m not imagining it. Olive is lying beside me, staring into the darkness. “And she talked me into not telling my dad.”
“Man,” I say. Such wisdom, I know. “Seriously?”
“Yeah,” Olive answers. “So now do you understand that I can’t just kiss someone, knowing there’s someone out there who doesn’t have a clue?”
Suddenly I get it. The shit with Maresa and me must have reminded her of that. No wonder she freaked out. Suddenly I feel like a total idiot. “Olive, I—”
“No, I believe you.” Her voice is quiet. “I just wanted to explain why I reacted like I did.”
I nod silently. “It wasn’t a lie,” I repeat after a while, when the silence gets too much. “But something else was.” I see her hold her breath. “And you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t,” she retorts. Silence. She’s a sadist. “You have to say it.”
“Don’t force me to.”
“You have to,” she repeats, not taking her eyes off me.
I close mine. “The thing about me not wanting to kiss you, that was . . . I’ve wanted to kiss you this whole fucking time.”
She’s not moving now. She lies motionless in front of me, and then everything happens very fast. “I’d say kiss me now, but I’m afraid I just whiteyed . . .”
“We’ve brushed our teeth since then,” I point out, because she seems not to remember that. “You insisted on it.” I lean forward. “Just so you know.”
And then I do it.
It’s a hungry kiss, and for a few seconds, she’s overwhelmed.
Then she wraps her arms around me and presses into me.
And oh, God, this woman will be the death of me.
I move against her and press her against the wall behind her bed.
She groans in surprise. I take her bottom lip gently between my teeth, and then I let her go before she feels how tight my pants are getting.
She gasps for air. I kiss her quickly on the tip of her nose and roll to one side, even though that’s anything but easy.
But she’s still not entirely sober, she had a nightmare, and .
. . I want to get this right. Yes, it’s out there.
I don’t want to have a bit of fun with Olive Garden.
I want something real, and I can’t expect to have that without some effort on my part.
I get goose bumps as I feel her hand on my chest. Maybe she can sense what she’s doing to me when she runs her fingers over me, or maybe not.
She rests her head on my chest. “That was a kiss,” she announces in the end.
“Your powers of perception are astonishing.”
“I know, Colin.”
Colin. I have to shut my eyes. Not Fantino. That’s what she calls me when I piss her off. And right now, I don’t want to piss her off. Yeah, plot twist.
Her arm is on my stomach, and her fingers are caressing my body.
I don’t know how this is possible. Maybe I’m dreaming too.
I want to kiss her again. I want to keep holding her, I don’t want it to get light outside because, once it does, there’s a chance that this is all in my head.
Right now, though, I’m very certain this is real.
Her hair is tickling my throat, the taste of her is in my mouth, and her body is warm.
I don’t know if I’ve ever fallen asleep like this.
There was nothing like this with Maresa.
There was fucking, followed by turning away.
Didn’t faze me, or so I always thought, but maybe I don’t know myself as well as I thought I did.
Maybe Olive Garden is awakening something inside me that scares me and makes me braver in equal measure.
Maybe I am capable of feeling. Real feelings. And of showing them to her.
She puts her arm over me, scootches closer, and then her head grows heavier against my chest. Mine is heavy too. She’s warm. And I’m not letting her go. I won’t ever let her go.